A Letter of Correspondence

A Letter of Correspondence from Marcus Vanderberg to Lucius Callum

December 11th, 1865

My dear Lucius how long it has been indeed, I have received your last letter in full health and wellness and thank you for the pages that you sent along they shall help tremendously in my research. Martha is doing well, although she does not very much like the cold however and spends most of her time in that wonderful Mahogany chair you keep by the fireplace. Not like myself however, I have spent much of my time out on these wonderous snow covered mountain sides, and shall I say it is a beautiful piece of land that you have acquired. I shall love to hear the story of how you have come in possession but that is for another day.

In my advents I have explored what I can only assume to be the bulk of the land that you have. Although I have a bit of a problem. You see Lucius I have found something quite peculiar in these woods and therefore I must beseech you to write me back at your earliest convenience. Indeed, it is a strange sight and I assume you shall want to know exactly what it was that I experienced and to be frank with you Lucius, I do not rightly know.

It was a Tuesday afternoon and I had just stepped out of the house for a quick smoke of the pipe, the one gifted to me by your wife. As I sat there, I noticed the faint chill in the air that rapped against my bones in just the right way. After grabbing my boots and sending my regards to Martha I began to walk out into the forest, following one of the paths that I regularly taken. The path was covered with giant green pines that towered above making me feel as a tiny bug among the great expanses. Hindsight is a funny thing my friend.

Dark clouds settled into the sky and snow began to fall. Soon the snowfall turned sour, falling in heavy white sheets that rivalled those of Gromstad. Before I knew it my tracks were covered. I was surround in a thick white ocean of snow. Finding my way to a nearby pine and sitting next to it hoping to find my way back when the snow let up.

As I sat by that tree the snow kept falling and falling. A thick blanket of fog had settled in as it often does in times like these. I had lost all sight of anything else other than the tree against which I was sitting. Lucius when I tell you I had never been colder I hope that you shall believe me for we fought in the battle of Gromstad, and you shall very well do good to not forget those nights of freezing rain and hail that peppered us. My thoughts had turned to these battles of old to pass the time.

I hear those cannonballs among all the nights. Looking back one those nights in Gromstad I thank you for those small pleasantries. How you had given me half of you ration. Remember how we all used to joke about the hardtack tasting like bark? It was a tough time to live through for sure, and how we have made it out alive I shall never know. Although the victory we sustained that battle was all worth it in the end, even the injury you sustained. I remember the first time I sa3 you outside of the medical tent, I was shocked to see you with all your limbs.

While I was stuck in the theater of the mind, I had not yet noticed the small circle of light that has originated in the middle distance. It was not until the orb of light began to move closer that I noticed. At first, my thoughts had turned to Martha, but that could not have been the case for I have been married to that woman for a decade now, and she has never once offered to walk with me. Confused I began to shout out for the light. The light jostled in the air as if I had scared whoever was carrying such thing.

As the light began to approach a figure shaped itself. It was dark and the figure looked like a small rotund woman wearing a bonnet. My guesses made correct as the figure closed in enough for me to see the face and complete body. It was indeed a woman, short and stout that reminded me of a tea kettle, she was wearing not a bonnet but a thick woolen coat that draped around her body, the snow was stuck to it in thick patches around the back of her neck and the elbows. How the snow stayed there did not even cross my mind at the time, but now thinking back I should have sensed that something was odd. She was carrying a lantern which emitted a soft yellow glow that pierced the fog around us.

Now Lucius, you may be wondering what this woman had been saying to me, that is just its old friend, she was completely silent. Her eyes were glossy, and she walked right next to me and stares into the middle distance., just as I had been before she appeared. The woman’s face was tinted blue, and I filled with an intense fear for her wellbeing. I tried to converse with her, waving my hands in front of her face trying to grab the attention of this mystery woman. She remained unmoved staring into the distance,

Happy to at least to have someone else to wait out the storm with I draped her with my jacket and began to communicate. Telling her all about my research and the reasons that brought me in to the mountains in the first place. She was a strikingly beautiful woman if I can remember correctly, apologies for the jumping around in my paragraphs Lucius, for it was a long night and what happened when morning came has shaken me even after all these weeks past. But back to what I was saying, she was a fair looking lady, her skin even though I had draped another coat around her remained blue and at a point in the night I feared for her life.

Continuing my talks with her however it eventually led me to you, I do not know if it was the madness that I seemed to be under, or if I am such a lonely soul, but I told this woman everything I had ever known. I told her of how you and I fought in the war, and battles, the great merry nights of drinking we took part in. I told her of the battle of Gromstad, and how the enemy using the cover of a fog, very much like the fog we were currently under, had found us and slaughtered our battalion. I told her of how we had fought them off barely, and of the grieving for our soldiers. I told her how you had joked about never having to ration off hardtack anymore after the loss of our battalion.

Seeming to stir at the mention of your name, she had the lantern now close to her face, she was staring into it, the pupils were so small it was as if they had ceased to exist at all. Continuing with my telling of your exploits, I told her of how you had come upon wealth of great imagination overnight, and how you had blessed all your friends, including myself, with money and fame that few had never hoped to achieve before. As the night drew on and her movements kept ever unchanging, I decided to call it a night, the snow was beginning to let up, but I doubted I could convince the woman to stand and walk to the house with me I decided to stay with her for the night.

My dreams were odd, they were of you my dear friend. Although they depicted you as not as such. The dream began with you sitting inside a house, not just any house mind you friend, it was the house you had lent us to stay in. And you were talking to someone although I could not make out who for my dream focused on you only. You seemed heated, your face flushed red, and your mouth was flapping up and down quickly and sternly it was easy to see you were angry. You were sitting in a dark red mahogany chair.

Standing from the chair very quickly you had grabbed a fire poker and were now waving it around, smashing it into the various wall ornaments. You began to lunge forward with the poker extended. You contacted whoever you were aiming at for blood splattered against your face, it rolled down your eyelids and lips in the same way I see the raindrops sliding down the glass during rainfall. You counted to stab and poke into what I can only now guess was a corpse, blood was spraying everywhere with each swing, more and more it covered your face, your body, your arms and hands were so covered it was hard to tell the difference between what was your hand and what was fire poker that you held with such ferocity and impunity that the body met with every swing of the wrought iron.

I tell you friend I woke with such a start that I could only feel the blood in my eardrums as the thwack of the iron to flesh followed me from the dream. I still smelled the blood and ashes that permeated that dream. I felt like I never left. Taking a moment to gather my senses and the dream fading, the thing that stuck with me, even as I walked back to the house was the rhythmic drumming of iron against meat.

My body was ice, I had fallen asleep without my jacket leaving it to the lady who I now noticed as missing. The only thing that remained where she was sitting was my jacket. Picking up the jacket underneath was the lantern that she carried with her. Perplexed I pick it up and studied it. It was a standard lantern that one could find at almost any General Store, the oil catch was empty and, dry even. However, the bottom of this lantern was an engraving, Demoine. Picking up the lantern and storing it in my jacket I began to shout around the forest for a Demoine.

I found no response to any of the shouting and searching found only the trees that kept me company, following the path that I saw her approach form last night there seemed to be no existence of the footsteps. The path that she followed lead directly to one of the cliffs faces that spiraled down into intensely sharp and jagged rocks. With my search being unfounded I began to find my way back to the house where surely, I would get a stern talking to from Martha.

As the days pressed on, I became more curious as to the whereabouts to this woman, devoting whatever time I was not researching to searching for her. I had no such luck into the physical whereabouts of her, however I did find commiserating things when researching the area in which we are currently residing. I found that the house and land that we resided on had owned by one, Mariska Demoine up until 1849 when she disappeared. The3 local law enforcement ruled it cold in 1850, but my sources inside claim that they never gave it a good go at the investigation.

And forgive me old friend but I did a little digging into your past as well. I found that 1849 was the exact year that you my friend had come upon that great unimaginable wealth. My d3ar friend I do not know whether it is the mountain air or if I am truly going insane. I once again am asking, no, imploring you to write my back.

I hope to receive a letter from you soon my friend for we have quite a bit to discuss, Martha sends her best wishes and regards.

Best Regards, Marcus Vanderberg.

PS, Martha asks that you ship us a pair of fire pokers, she is getting tired of stirring the flame with branches I find in the wilderness.

FROM TH EOFFICE OF THE DENVER MUNICIPAL MUSEUM SPECIALIZING IN THE YEARS FOLLOWING THE CIVIL WAR

A few words from Jaime Fredrickson Head Researcher of The Denver Municipal Museum

This was the last letter written by Marcus Vanderberg who disappeared shortly afterwards. From the noticeably short and poorly written police report that was filed, I gleamed that the last person to see Marcus was his wife, Martha Vanderberg. She made no recorded statements other than the filed police report, however the recipient of the letter, Lucius Callum, he committed suicide shortly after Marcus’ disappearance.